My Secret Shame

I have a secret shame, and I'm finally ready to share it with the world:

I collect baseball cards.

Yes, on the outside I am a grown, professional woman with a master's degree and the ability to go to rated-R movies. But on the inside, I am a pimply 11-year-old boy who still thinks kissing is gross. When I'm having a rough day, I go to Target and pick up a pack and rip it open. And I love that smell, the smell of a fresh pack of cards, and, really, the smell of hope. The hope that inside, I'll find a player I really like, and not another Homer Bailey, because he is never nice to me.

This secret shame started the summer of 1992, but I never bought packs. I went down the street to a little Griffith, Indiana, shop named with initials--L&M or something like that. It was a baseball card shop, and inside the owners had beautiful Robin Ventura and Mark Grace and Ryne Sandberg and Jack McDowell cards. I only wanted Cubs and Sox, or former Cubs and Sox, and those four players especially. I was a unique specimen, a girl who collected cards and liked BOTH Chicago teams, so the owner used to set aside cards he knew I'd like and cut me a really good deal. We never had the money to go to the park for baseball games, and we didn't have a TV that got reception, so these cards were my window into the faces of these men that I revered, and those faces were in my mind as I pored over the daily box scores. Because above all, above the collecting and the cards themselves, I loved baseball more than almost anything.

I never really thought about getting the cards signed because it seemed impossible. People with autographed baseball cards were so glamorous. I got one card signed--Robin Ventura's #1 Draft Pick Topps card. I think it was a 1988. I need to check on that. I went to Southlake Mall in Merrillville, Indiana, where he was signing, and when I saw him in person, I started crying, like this was the Beatles or something. He signed the card and smiled and I was happier than I ever thought I'd be again. In fact, maybe that moment was the happiest I ever was--it's impossible to quantify that kind of thing, though.

I thought I had a lot of cards. I had a jumbo binder full, all of Cubs and Sox. And then I went away to college, and I brought it with me, proudly displaying a bumper sticker for The Score's old radio station across its cover. But I wasn't proud of the cards--I hid them. I put the binder in my college storage area until I met Mark Wilkins. Mark and I became instant friends when he found out I loved baseball. We had other things in common, too, such as our intense addiction to our college family. We didn't always like the school, but we loved the friends there, and we both thought of our school as our family. But back to baseball, Mark knew Robin Ventura was my favorite (everyone at college knew he was my favorite), and even though Mark cheered for the Red Sox, we talked about Ventura versus Boggs and would a Chicago or Boston team ever win a World Series again? And then he told me he collected baseball cards, and I breathed a sigh of relief, because I finally had someone I could share my secret shame with. His collection was back in Massachusetts, and it was far more full than mine, but I could tell from his face that he understood how cool baseball cards were. And he understood why, when I was feeling homesick, I would sneak up to the storage area and page through my binder and look at the faces of my hometown teams.

And then Mark's brother died, and Mark had to leave school, and I was so profoundly sad for him, my good, dear friend who was one of the most generous people I'd ever known, that he had to experience this intense pain, and then leave the family he had at school. I was no good with expressing emotion, but I wanted him to know I cared, so I wrote him a letter and tucked inside my Robin Ventura autographed card, because I felt like that was the only way to show him that I wanted him to feel better and that I would miss him, and I knew I was telling him in a language he understood.

Mark gave me back the card and another Ventura card, mounted in a beautiful casing, saying he couldn't possibly accept the card but appreciated the gesture. And he eventually came back to Minnesota and we are still friends to this day, and since then he has given me boxes and boxes of baseball cards, and I have a signed Saltalamacchia card that I keep meaning to send him. We've seen teams from both our cities win World Series titles, but not the team that matters. Not the Cubs. I imagine when that happens, he'll be one of the first people I want to celebrate with, because he understands waiting and disappointment and what it means to have just one dream come true.

I didn't really collect any new cards because I had no time for it, and I lost a little interest. But a couple years ago, I started collecting again, and I started collecting players from all the teams, and now I have begun collecting signatures on baseball cards. That means I hang out with some of the creepiest, weirdest, most unwashed people you will ever see in your life. Now, I will only collect autographs at the park. I will not go to hotels, or chase people down in restaurants and ask for their autographs. That's their private time. Some guys only sign at hotels, so I guess I will never get those guys. It's different asking them at the park, I guess because they're at work and it's their jobs. But some of these guys will chase down players in their cars, and they'll pay kids to ask for autographs, and they will beg you for an autograph you got that they really want.

Sometimes I look at them, and I know this is their whole life, and it makes me sad, because I picture their families at home and I know there is no way they can actually support a family on what they make selling baseball cards. Or I picture the families they will never have because I am the first female they have ever spoken to, and I don't really count. And sometimes I look at them and I want to punch them in the throat because they're obnoxious. So why do I do it? I don't really know. I guess it's the challenge. I love that sometimes I'm the only one that the guys sign for, and I know it's because I'm usually the only girl there and I'm hilarious, and they know I couldn't possibly be a dealer. And it's a means to an end. I get to meet these guys. I have met some of the greatest players to ever play this beautiful game. I know the ones who are always nice (Joe Mauer) and the ones who will never stop, even to spit on your face if your mustache is on fire (Yadier Molina). Really, most of the guys are so nice, and if it weren't for their 300 dollar jeans and 1500 dollar shoes, you'd never know they were fancy or famous.

And the thing is, I have met some of the most wonderful people in the world, and I'm not talking about the baseball players. In the middle of the unwashed masses of collectors, a few people have come forward with being awesome.

One guy is a Chicago police officer. He used to be at every game at Wrigley, but last year a guy robbed me, and he chased after him, and he was attacked by the perp, and now it's a big legal battle. We've hung out a few times outside of baseball, and he has a great heart and I'd trust him with my life, even though I barely know him. He never comes anymore, and that's sad. That thief didn't just take my stuff; he robbed me of my friend, too.

Another guy is a Chicago Public School teacher. He's taught me a lot about collecting, and I can talk to him about baseball and he takes me seriously. He's a Brewers fan, but really he just loves the game. He gets really intense when we're having a good day and he gets really curmudgeony when no one signs. Sometimes he brings his two nephews, and he sits back while they get autographs, and he looks alternately proud of them and irritated with them if they aren't aggressive enough. I love to watch it. He just got married, so I know he won't be around as much, especially once he starts having kids. And I know it will kill him when I post the autographs I got at the park while he stayed home with his family. But the difference between most of the other collectors and him is that he has imagined a life for himself outside of chasing down multimillionaires and asking for the stroke of their pen on a piece of cardboard. He likes that, but he doesn't live for it.

And then there's the dad, the rough, ex-gang member who has stories of bullets whizzing by his ear, a former alcohol-addicted guy who has cleaned up his life, and whose kids, especially his youngest son, worship him. He swears constantly, and those words are probably among the nicest things he says. He jokes around and hurts my feelings and then laughs like a pirate. If we were on a reality-television show, they'd have to bleep at least 70 percent of what he says. "This sucks," he says, at least once a game, especially after getting turned down for an autograph. But he's the only one who could get Russell Martin to stop and sign, so I think he's pretty cool. And he loves his kids. He shows it in a bizarre way, threatening to break their arms or calling them gay, but he doesn't mean any of those things. He loves his family fiercely, and he would take a bullet for any of them. And they would follow him anywhere. It amazes me that he has that kind of influence. It is amazing and humbling to know someone out there hangs on your every word and every action. And he was another guy who chased after the robber, his youngest son tagging behind, too, because he does anything his dad does. He went after a criminal for me, someone he barely knew, someone who just happens to have that same baseball-card sickness.

There are a couple other semi-normal ones of us out there, and we all have our stories and our reasons, but none of us really talk about this part of our lives with our other friends. They wouldn't understand. They would think it's cool that we met Chipper Jones and Bryce Harper, but they wouldn't want to stand outside for 12 hours with us. That's something only we understand, and maybe that's why we're friends with each other. We're in a hospital ward suffering from the same disease, or we're at a 12-step meeting admitting we have a problem but that we're not quite ready to get that monkey off our backs.

And I know the baseball players think we're losers, and I can live with that. I won't even think of that after the game when I'm counting my cards and looking at my autographs again and again and texting my friends about our loot, where my one binder has evolved into two bookshelves worth of binders filled with cards. It's my secret shame, but it's public now, and I feel like there are more people like me out there somewhere who are ashamed, too.

Find me. Let's do this together.